


Siren Rising

by littledust



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-24
Updated: 2006-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:50:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pansy and Narcissa both want something from the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Siren Rising

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://wintercorwin.livejournal.com/profile)[**wintercorwin**](http://wintercorwin.livejournal.com/) in [](http://community.livejournal.com/hp_lovebirds/profile)[**hp_lovebirds**](http://community.livejournal.com/hp_lovebirds/). Thank you to my beta, who put up with continual swearing and whining about how I thought I could never finish. But I promise it was a labor of love!

Surprisingly, Pansy had no fear of drowning even after she almost did. Rather than stand out in her memory as an incident of childhood trauma, it glittered in her mind like a strange jewel, of no particular value to anyone but herself. The family had been on vacation in Spain, Pansy only five years old but determined to seem much bigger. Anything to keep pace with her cousin, Peony, who was nearly thirteen and thus a grownup in her eyes. Pansy trailed after her like a long strand of seaweed, much to everyone's amusement (except Peony's).

"Go on and play in the water, I'll be right there," Peony said, then sat down in the sand as though she intended to stay there and sun for quite a while. But Pansy did not want to doubt her cousin, and so ran down to the water and splashed around, shouting with delight. (Her behavior, much to her parents' consternation, more befitted a young boy than a young girl, despite her love of dolls and the color pink.) The ocean was a lovely, living thing, and the waves tugged at her ankles like children begging for attention. _Come. Come play with us._ Always ready for a good game, Pansy walked farther and farther out, until at last a large wave knocked her off balance and pulled her under.

She panicked and struggled for air until she opened her eyes. The salt stung but the water was so beautiful, the water and the sky and the light and the way it all met together in one dazzling array of greens and blues and whites. And spots had gathered at the corners of her vision, more colors to admire even as darkness crept in.

The last thing Pansy saw before she lost consciousness was a woman with green hair that floated softly about her head. _Mermaid,_ Pansy thought, and almost laughed as her eyes fluttered shut. The woman looked so peaceful suspended in the water, as though time had paused and even death itself had stilled for a moment. Looking at her, Pansy felt no fear.

She came to hours later, and it wasn't until after her mother burst into tears and embraced her that she could ask about the mermaid. "We didn't see any mermaid," Peony answered right away, eager to assuage her guilt by being helpful. "Auntie saw you floating and started to run, but Daddy got there first and pulled you out. Did you really see a mermaid? They don't like our kind much."

"She couldn't have seen one," Pansy's mother murmured, stroking her hair. "They hate wizards, lure them into the water and then kill them for sport. That dreadful man Dumbledore keeps the only tame ones at Hogwarts. But these waters have been safe for years, otherwise of course we wouldn't visit. You were just dreaming, Pansy."

"I'm sure she was trying to help me," Pansy objected, sullen.

"Oh, my dear, at most a mermaid will only watch you drown."

  
* * * * *

  
They used to drown witches, of course, and Pansy suspected that "they" would soon begin again, the Dark Lord fallen to ashes and the Muggle lovers in power. The old Pureblood families rallied together as always, presenting a disdainful mask to the rest of the world, even as they despaired in private. Pride was pride, after all. History moved in cycles. The blood traitors and Mudbloods would fall from grace. Forgetting, always forgetting, that such cycles applied to Purebloods as well. People were so blind about such things.

Most people, anyway. Pansy tapped her wand three times against a seemingly boarded up building, hissing with impatience as the various protective spells shifted and unlocked, revealing a glamorous flat in one of wizarding London's most exclusive neighborhoods. After several more password spells and flights of stairs, Pansy opened the door to one, fired off the correct order of requisite counterjinxes, and pulled the wig off of her head. Muggles, lesser creatures though they were, offered simple disguises that set off no magical alerts.

"My dear, I'm in the bath."

Pansy rolled her eyes but strolled in. "You force me to take all these absurd precautions just to get here and you can't even be bothered to climb out of your tub?"

Narcissa Malfoy smiled, serene in her ornate white bathroom complete with claw-foot tub, making no move to cover herself despite the perfect clarity of the water. "It was merely another absurd precaution, as you might call it. The only other person who might be visiting today is a young politician I have been encouraging. The sight of me would have stunned him into silence and rendered him easy to get rid of." She was, Pansy conceded, correct in her assessment; age had not yet touched Narcissa. Nudity softened her normally cold beauty, and the heat of the water made all that exposed skin slightly flushed, a pleasing contrast against the creamy white of the bathtub. "And it's hardly my fault that I cannot be seen associating with you in this fashion. You connected yourself too closely with the Death Eaters."

Grating as the arrogance was, it could only be expected from someone who managed to rise above her husband's arrest as well as her son's dubious morality. All the press about Harry Potter made the role of heroic mother easy to play, easy to exploit. The public loved Narcissa and her wide blue eyes saying that she had never truly agreed with her husband, that she had always lived her life at a crossroads, unable to choose between family and What Was Right. But now that her only son had chosen to join the Right Side, the conflict no longer existed and she was freed from the Wrong People. Narcissa subscribed to the _Daily Prophet_ purely so she could enjoy a good laugh every morning, although lately the _Prophet_ more concerned itself with rumors of another goblin rebellion, reformed Death Eaters and their ilk no longer as interesting as memories of the war faded.

"At least I had the sense to refuse the Mark," Pansy retorted, wanting to shove the woman's head underwater. Narcissa Malfoy (amazing, that she could get away with the last name _Malfoy_ still, although the alternative _Black_ wasn't much better) liked to assert her superiority whenever possible, all that inbred Black arrogance coupled with a natural urge to thwart any other dominant personality. She had honed the ability to icy perfection; Pansy hoped to someday match it. "You know what I've come here for?"

"Of course."

Pansy started to take a deep breath and thought better of it, as such an action would denote weakness of purpose. "The families of those who were killed rather than caught. They must not starve. The children must not go to orphanages or traitors or Mudbloods. Those who died for their cause deserve better than that. You've got to pull strings, you've got to see that they receive the help they need. Left alone, the Ministry won't lift a finger to help them." Forceful, commanding. _You've got to._ She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, trying not to think of how very fetching Narcissa looked under all that bathwater. This was more important. For all the new government professed justice, blood was still everything. Bad families, bad houses, bad blood. The Ministry would never resort to outright murder, but why not turn away and kill with indifference?

Narcissa threw back her head (exposing a soft throat) and laughed. "My dear, this is precisely why you and your brave compatriots are starving. The _cause_. Causes inspire things, like wars in lovers of peace and impolitic charity in the selfish. You'll battle to the death for them, won't you? Battle for a lot of fools drunk on nostalgia and paranoia and their own drummed up sense of self-importance." Her eyes narrowed, though she looked no less beautiful. "My husband and sister died for a cause. My son nearly did, and for two different causes. There is nothing worth dying for." Back to airy indifference, she waved a hand. "Certainly nothing worth jeopardizing my current lifestyle for, unless some adequate compensation can be provided. As well as a guarantee of safety."

Pansy had an answer ready for this one. "All I need is money. No sensible person keeps every Galleon in Gringotts. I know there are ways you can have it anonymously distributed. I'll take full responsibility for it. I have the resources to pay you back. And they'll know, the families will know, but their pride won't let them mention anything. _You_ know old families. But you'll be well-liked in their circles, but not too liked, since old families hate debts until their repaid. You'll have friends everywhere."

"Well answered." Pansy could not repress a shiver as warm, wet fingertips trailed down her face. Narcissa's expression of frank interest was not difficult to interpret. She had heard rumors of Narcissa's young lady friends even before she was old enough to understand what it meant, when a very young Draco carelessly mentioned that he kissed all his friends because his mother did the same. Lucius seemed to be the only man Narcissa had ever been interested in, but the same could not be said of women. She liked them young, she liked them pretty but not more beautiful than herself. So rumor said, and rumor often got it wrong.

Still, she had always wanted to get the better of Narcissa.

Not to mention she was a _very_ attractive woman.

So she bent over the bathtub and kissed her.

It was fairly light as far as kissing went, but Narcissa seemed not at all surprised by it, and leaned back with an expression that might be called a smirk, were a Malfoy nee Black ever uncouth enough to do something so crass. "Take your clothes off and join me," she suggested, raising a leg out of the water invitingly.

Pansy automatically began shrugging off her robes before she had time to process conscious thought; lust had a terrible habit of working against her, skewing her thought processes, making two and two equal five. But that required a simple solution: telling oneself that two and two totaled four, and holding the fact in one's mind. Sex would be a contest of wills. A conquest of one will.

 _I am not afraid,_ Pansy told herself, watching Narcissa hide a smile at her little-girl white bra with matching knickers. Well, who cared about underthings, anyway. She was not a great beauty by any standards, particularly society's, and yet she held power in her palms. Power was better. Kicking the last of her clothing to one side, she climbed into the tub, straddling Narcissa, pinning that impossible body beneath her. _I am not intimidated._ The water was warm and Narcissa still had that amused smile, so Pansy kissed her again. Tried to ignore the trembling in her knees and the sheer heat of it all, the water between her legs and the taste of the woman beneath--no, underneath--her. There was nothing cold or calculated about the softness of Narcissa's lips, the weight of her breasts in her palms. Pansy indulged herself and touched, _touched._

This was unusual, she knew, these long kisses with Narcissa making minimal effort to return them, to administer her own caresses. But she seemed content enough in her bathwater letting Pansy touch her (a goddess being worshipped at the altar). There was nothing other than labored breathing and the soft splashing of water, which had yet to cool, or perhaps it was only the excitement, the fluttering of Pansy's pulse. Narcissa's skin was smooth as the soft sand of the beaches of her childhood, every aspect of her worn by tides but still essentially made of stone.

The shock of Narcissa's hand between her legs was such that Pansy gasped, jerking her mouth from Narcissa's and managing to bite her own lip in the process. Bitterness pooled in a corner of her mouth and then trickled out; Narcissa wiped it away with her free hand while the other insinuated itself: fingers snaking serpentine, circular motions around Pansy's clit, always circling, like a predatory bird or water down a drain, neither one nor the other. Narcissa's smirk was unbecoming and Pansy longed to rid her of it, but lacking the concentration necessary, settled for burying her face in Narcissa's neck, taking in the light floral scent and the skin and the slight sheen of sweat. There was no longer the element of shock to the proceedings yet she continued to gasp anyway, hips arching forward to meet those fingers, squirming and _needing_ and oh, Narcissa must have loved it all, must have reveled in every aspect, heartless despite the pulse beating in her neck, cold-blooded snake woman with a preternatural glow, whose luminosity nevertheless propelled Pansy, or perhaps pushed her under--continually under--

In the haze of orgasm Pansy lifted her head and saw, before her eyelids fluttered shut, a woman in the doorway. Her only impression was a blurred outline and she rode the sensations out, the flow and then the ebb of pleasure. It was only after that she became aware of tiny hiccupping sobs, and that the stranger was barely more than a girl, and that now she had fled, heart in pieces. Pansy turned back to Narcissa, who smiled.

"Someone you wanted to get rid of," Pansy muttered, standing up. Water trickled down her body, and she was suddenly cold all over.

Narcissa pulled her back down. "She outlived her usefulness. But you haven't."


End file.
